Among forklifts, there are forklifts which are driven by hydraulic motors to travel. In such a forklift, separate hydraulic motors are connected to left and right front wheels which are drive wheels and oil is supplied from traveling hydraulic pumps to the respective hydraulic motors to cause the forklift to travel. The hydraulic motors are mounted in a vehicle body in such attitudes that their drive shafts are along a left-right direction of the vehicle body. The traveling hydraulic pumps are driven by an engine and disposed on an extended line of an output shaft of the engine. The engine is mounted in a state in which the output shaft is along a front-rear direction of the vehicle body (see Patent Document 1, for example).
In a forklift, mast cylinders for moving forks up and down are mounted to axle cases housing drive axles, in general. In the forklift in which the hydraulic motors are connected to the front wheels as described above, the axle cases have larger diameters than those in the forklift without the hydraulic motors and therefore positions of the mast cylinders are displaced forward with respect to the drive axles. If the mast cylinders are displaced forward, weight of a counterweight needs to be set to a large value in order to secure stability during handling of loads and dimensions of an outside shape of the vehicle body increases as compared with those in prior art even if maximum weight of a load to be treated is the same, which significantly affects mobility of the forklift due to increase in a turning radius and the like.
To solve such a problem, power of a hydraulic motor may be divided and transmitted to the left and right front wheels. To put it concretely, a differential gear is provided between left and right drive axles and the hydraulic motor and the power of the hydraulic motor may be transmitted to the left and right front wheels through the differential gear. In this forklift, it is essential only that the drive axles be disposed between the differential gear and the front wheels, which does not increase the diameters of the axle cases. As a result, distances between the drive wheels and the mast cylinders may be set to about the same values as those in conventional forklifts, the counterweight does not need to be increased, and the forklift can be driven by the hydraulic motor to travel.